Realms of Shadow

2

She chose to walk to her destination-a walk of many nights, but one that allowed her to flex her druidic muscles. She would live off the land and revel in moon, stars, sun, and earth. She supposed some part of her would miss these things when she moved to Shade Enclave, but then it wasn't as if she couldn't leave now and…

Anyway, it didn't really matter. When she reined in the druid again after this trip, the wizard would find satisfaction. Best to please that-the strongest of her two natures-first.

As the Desertsmouths rose on the horizon, the bushes and small trees along the banks of the river by which the druid-wizard had been traveling gave way to meadow grass as she neared the foothills. She curved away from the river and followed a brook through sun-speckled groves and alpine flowers.

After traveling for several more hours, with ground squirrels and meadowlarks as her only companions, she broke free of a small patch of oaks and aspen to encounter a cottage near a dip in the creek she had been following. She had passed several cabins along the way, but until now she had come across none that had the aura of promise she sought. This one, though… this one was different.

She peered into a warped-glass window, but the dwelling's single room was empty. A bowl of stew and sheets of parchment on a rough-hewn table told her of recent occupation. In fact, a door between a case of shelves and some gardening tools against the back wall was cracked open, allowing a ray of sunlight to reach in and illuminate dust motes and floorboards.

She would observe the cottage's owner. It had been a while since she had enacted the Change, and it would feel good to assume wolf form again. She performed the ritual and watched lazily as her palms thickened into paws, her fingers withdrew into pads. She felt her nose and mouth pull out as if some god shaped them of clay. Fur sprouted all over her body; she was the earth in spring, shoots of hair emerging from her in a quiet burst. Her bone structure changed, forced her prone. Her knees reversed; her tailbone extended into a plume. The process lasted a mere moment, and a strange voice in her mind wove through it all, as if it, and not she, had commanded the Change.

The druid-wizard veered into the meadow grasses, slunk to a vantage point among them. Her brown ears and blue eyes lifted to just above the grasses' tips.

The man's back was partially turned to her. He was slim yet muscular, and his facial features-silhouetted against the green and yellow of the creek's trees and the sun on the leaves-formed smooth angles against his tousled hair.

He spoke in the voice that had accompanied her Change.

The druid-wizard sidled around to better see what the man was doing. He was crouched near a vegetable garden, shaded under an eave. He spoke to a rose plant.

But his lips did not move.

His voice seemed to fade for a moment, as if the druid-wizard's surprise at the realization forced That Which Was to become That Which Was Not. But then her credulity caught up to her. She had known stranger things than this in her hundreds of years of magic. Why had this affected her?

The voice returned, rising and falling in windlike rhythm. It seemed to create a wind, for though no breeze swept the grasses among which the druid-wizard hid, the rose nodded and swayed, almost as though it responded to the man's thoughts.

The druid-wizard swiveled her ears, as if to better catch those thoughts.

… fell asleep in my stew and dreamed of music. In that music, you spoke to me. And I tried to tell you "soon," but I don't know if my words reached you. Now I am awake, and I can talk to you only like this. Please understand me. Please know that I am talking to you. Ah! You nod! But I never know if your replies are real or merely figments of my desperation. I have lost my ability to know anything with certainty. I am… I am lost…

He broke into quiet sobs. The druid-wizard thought she sensed an image in his mind-an image of a woman…

Clearly the man had gone mad in his isolation. Fascinating.

The druid-wizard could almost imagine that he spoke to her somehow, and not to the rose. Some part of her responded to the idea with a surge of longing so sudden that she could not breathe, an imperative that, for a moment, wiped out all else.

She had not lost control of her emotions in such a way since childhood. To know surprise at a simple hermit's thought-projection! To be blindsided by emotion hitherto suppressed, unsuspected! She should leave; power of this magnitude could ruin her. Even as she thought this, she knew that whatever force was at work here had already secured its hold on her. Plus, she must complete the task for the Shadovar, and that meant exploring every avenue of this country. She must see where this path led.

The man shook himself. Perhaps he chided himself for becoming so emotional over a plant, or perhaps he shuddered in an echo of the druid-wizard's longing. He stood and entered his cabin, closing the door behind him, leaving the rose to nod and twitch alone. It turned to face the druid-wizard-almost as if it knew she was there and regarded her with curiosity. But that was just the way some breeze had blown it.

Angry with herself, the druid-wizard resumed her human shape abruptly enough to cause herself pain and strode to the cottage's back door. She hated her weakness, but she could not deny that she wanted the man- wanted to make him speak to her as he had spoken to the rose.

As she knocked, she forced her turmoil aside and focused upon enhancing her beauty. She drew from the vague image of the woman she had seen in the man's mind, as well as from her own ideal self-image. Her eye color intensified; her hair took on new highlights and curls; the top few buttons of her shirt undid themselves. No man had ever resisted this spell.

The man opened the door, a puzzled half-smile betraying surprise at the appearance of a visitor so soon after his moment with the rose-and at the back door, no less. For a moment his heart had surged with the wild hope that… but no, he must not indulge such fantasies.

When he saw the woman, puzzlement gave way to lust and wariness, the latter because one such as this woman would never appear at a place such as this without trouble in the land or powerful magic at work.

Time for the druid-wizard to play her part, if she was really to make this man her own.

She adopted an expression of uncertainty and stammered a pattern of truths and half-truths. "I… I… felt drawn to this place. I have no one, and I dreamed that I must journey… I saw you with your rose, and I thought I would like to know love like that. So… here I am.

"I’ll leave if I came in error," she added, to dispel any doubts that might remain after her speech.

He said not a word-not one word for her in that voice! — but drew her inside.

Now I’ll see if I can call forth love as effectively as I can call forth pain, she thought. And, once I do, to see if love can grant me as much gratification. Perhaps, as some attest, even more.

She let her body take control-drew his head to hers, kissed him deeply, felt him kiss back. From there they fell to the floor, and so the day passed.

Afterward, as they sat at the table over fresh bowls of stew and the druid-wizard secretly used her magic to destroy any chance of a child taking root, the man finally spoke to her.

"I dreamed I would meet you," he said.

He had recurring dreams of a woman linked to him with powerful bonds. The bonds, though they kept the woman's spirit close to his, stretched over chasms of time and space. Her features were usually indistinct, but he thought she might look something like the druid-wizard.

"Was that the same dream in which your rose spoke to you?"

He looked at her askance. "No… you heard that?"

“Yes, I'm sorry. I couldn't help myself."

He frowned, then shook his head. "It's fine. It's probably good that you came now. I think I might have started to invent things, to hallucinate, if I'd been alone much longer."

Perhaps you already were hallucinating, the druid-wizard thought. She said, "How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. A long time. I got tired of cities and people and just wanted to get away for a while. How about you?"

"I've been alone for a long time, too. I live in the city, though, and I have… pets."

"That must help."

They fell into pregnant silence.

"Will you go back to the city, then?" he asked. "To take care of your pets?"

"Oh… yeah, I should. It's still home for now, even though I've found true love." She met his eyes and smiled as though at a joke. "Would you like to come with me?"

True love, she had said. The man supposed they were true lovers-he had dreamed of a woman something like this one, and this woman had been drawn here. But the words rang crass. He considered expressions of true love best uttered in times of great emotion, great change-not over bowls of half-eaten stew and among garden tools and cupboards. Just because she didn't share this fancy… that didn't mean he and this woman weren't destined for each other.

In any case, he had been away from the world long enough.

"I think… I think I will go with you," he said.

His thoughts drifted. What did this woman do, he wondered, when she wasn't trying to find her true love in the wilderness? And what city was she from?

He posed his questions.

"I do magic tricks," she replied, "in Phlan, on the Moonsea. I plan to move soon, though."

The druid-wizard watched the man clean up their dishes. Engineering his love had been easy; now she must figure out how to draw upon its power.